Word of the Day

: January 8, 2022

layman

noun LAY-mun

What It Means

A layman is a person who belongs to a religion but is a not a member of its clergy. Layman is also used for someone who does not belong to a particular profession or is not an expert in some field.

// A banquet was held in honor of the faithful laymen who have volunteered their time and services to the church.  

// The author claims the book to be an introduction to physics, but it proves to be quite inaccessible to the layman.

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layman in Context

"Elsewhere in the temple, I found the workplace of the trained laymen who had been granted permission to practice their art … despite not being ordained as monks." — Francesco Lastrucci, The New York Times, 25 Nov. 2021

Did You Know?

Layman is a closed compound of lay man. Lay is an adjective that means "of or relating to the people of a religious faith (but not of its clergy)." The origins of lay and layman go back to Greek laikos, meaning "of the people." Layman was originally used to distinguish between non-clerical people and the clergy before being used to distinguish non-professionals from professionals in a field (such as law or medicine).